Story Highlights

Why wait so long to report abuse?

I write my opinion at the risk of being ridiculed and called a male chauvinist. However, I have a valid question for (in this case) the over 150 women who testified that the U.S. Olympics medical doctor had been molesting female members of our Olympic team for years.

Do I doubt their honesty? Not really. After all, a jury convicted the man of sexually related offenses against some of these women, and he should receive whatever sentence our American laws demand.

My only issue is why? Why did these women wait so long before they reported this abuse to authorities? By doing this, they allowed additional U.S. Olympic athletes to become victims.

Was there no concern for those who came after them, or were they forced to keep quiet all these years, because other Olympic authorities threatened to end their Olympic careers if they reported the abuse?

If the latter, then why have those individuals not also been brought up on charges? Just like the movie industry, political people and others, where just recently women have started speaking up about abuse, rape and impropriety done by males years ago?

I just have to ask, why wait so long? I sympathize for these women, but my question remains. Why?

William Scarbro, Bethpage 37022

Re-examine wrong weather forecasts

“The Southeast is going to run above normal (temps), especially in Florida and Georgia. Both states will be at a lesser risk for a damaging freeze this year.”

The above long-range weather forecast was printed in your newspaper back in October. Considering this forecast was newsworthy last fall, it would seem that it would be newsworthy to follow up on that forecast.

This prediction of the weather for this area was absolutely wrong. Prolonged freezing temps were felt deep in the South. If in printing predictions of this sort, please follow up on them to determine how newsworthy and reliable those predictions actually come about.

President Trump misses the mark in two areas when it comes to guns, the late-night comics say. Would the president really have run into a school building, unarmed, to confront a mass shooter? And is arming teachers actually a good idea? https://usat.ly/2HPD0yJ
USA TODAY

The NCAA took away the University of Louisville's 2013 basketball championship because of its sex scandal. The cartoonist's homepage, courier-journal.com/opinion
Marc Murphy, The (Louisville) Courier-Journal

The Rev. Billy Graham disparaged Jews in a conversation Feb. 1, 1972, with President Nixon that was captured on White House recordings. Graham apologized 30 years later when the tapes were made public after denying in 1994 what he had said. The cartoonist's homepage, citizen-times.com/voices-views
David Cohen, Asheville (N.C.) Citizen-Times

Andy Kennedy is resigning as Ole Miss basketball coach effective at the end of the 2017-18 season. The cartoonist's homepage, clarionledger.com/opinion
Marshall Ramsey, The (Jackson, Miss.) Clarion-Ledger

Bet you've learned more about Devin Nunes in the past month than you ever knew before, the late-night comics say. If you still don't know the man behind the GOP memo, Bill Maher has a cheat sheet, https://usat.ly/2o3GapL
USA TODAY

A Mississippi legislator brought his handgun into the House chamber to protest a gun-rights bill. The cartoonist's homepage, clarionledger.com/opinion
Marshall Ramsey, The (Jackson, Miss.) Clarion-Ledger

Matt Gaetz is a Republican congressman from Florida whose guest to the State of the Union address was a white nationalist from Las Vegas. The cartoonist's homepage, pnj.com/opinion
Andy Marlette, Pensacola (Fla.) News Journal

The consequences of waterboarding

The organization Action of Christians to Abolish Torture disputes Homer Adams’ remark in his Jan. 15 letter to The Tennessean, “Waterboarding is not torture.”

His description makes waterboarding sound like a frat boy prank. Here is testimony of someone who suffered it:

“I was then dragged from the small box (waterboarding was often combined with other forms of torture), unable to walk properly and put on what looked like a hospital bed, and strapped down very tightly with belts. A black cloth was then placed over my face and the interrogators used a mineral water bottle to pour water on the cloth so that I could not breathe. After a few minutes the cloth was removed and the bed was rotated into an upright position. The pressure of the straps on my wounds was very painful. I vomited. …

“I struggled against the straps, trying to breathe, but it was hopeless. I thought I was going to die. I lost control of my urine. …

“On each occasion, I was suffocated once or twice and was put in the vertical position on the bed in between. On one occasion the suffocation was repeated three times. I vomited each time. …

“I collapsed and lost consciousness on several occasions. Eventually the torture was stopped by the intervention of the doctor.”

Readers of the “ends justify the means” mindset should note that waterboarding does not result in valid information. One tortured man said, “I want the torture to stop. I gave you anything you want to hear.”